Ionic React - <AUTHOR> https://ionicframework.com/blog/announcing-ionic-react/ <comment><USER2> I did an Ionic/Angular project a few years back and it's a perfectly cromulent technology if stay within it's wheelhouse. If the app you're building could easily be a website, but the client wants an app store presence, this is by far the easiest way to get there. For delivering content-heavy screens that aren't a drag on CPU, it works fine. And it's also fine for layering in basic device functionality like location services.

If expectations and budget are low, it's a great option.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for teaching me a new word in "cromulent." While we think Ionic is for more than just low-expectation apps (many brands and consumer apps use Ionic) we appreciate that it fills a need beyond that. Cheers!

<comment> ezequiel-garzon And me! Now this is interesting:

 _Cromulent first appeared in the February 18, 1996 episode of The Simpsons called "Lisa the Iconoclast," in what could be considered a throw-away line given during the opening credits. The schoolchildren of Springfield are watching a film about the founding father of Springfield, Jebediah Springfield. The film ends with Jebediah intoning, "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." One teacher at the back of the room leans over to another and says that she'd never heard the word embiggen before she moved to Springfield. "I don't know why," the other teacher replies. "It's a perfectly cromulent word."_

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-does- crom...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-does-cromulent- mean)

<comment> evil-olive It's one of my favorite Simpsons quotes. Wonderful little bit of linguistic hackery.

They make up one word, _embiggen_ , and just from the obvious root word of "big" it's clear what it means. Doubly so when taken in context, "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."

Then they make up a second word, _cromulent_ , and the meaning can be _entirely_ inferred from context. Embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word. Acceptable, adequate, maybe a bit unorthodox but "good enough".

<comment><USER2> And it's a pretty useful word. It's somewhere between "acceptable" and "plausible". It can kind of just mean whatever you need with a slight air of "I don't really know what I'm talking about, but don't worry it'll be fine."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kudos! This is a great project. I have one bone to pick, though. Had a show stopper issue a few months back with capacitor and the entire Ionic team was unresponsive, even on github. The issue was sending cookies to the server. Cookie would get set on the response but subsequent requests would not include the cookie. This was extremely aggravating and I had to halt my development. Relevant Github issue: [https://github.com/ionic- team/capacitor/issues/1373](https://github.com/ionic- team/capacitor/issues/1373). Would be great to know if a solution was ever found.

<comment><USER5> I used Ionic for 2 projects a few years back. Support on GitHub was, frankly, _crap_. I can sympathise to some degree, because they were still trying to figure out a commercialisation model, but they were far more interested in shipping new stuff and breaking things than actually stabilising what they already had. Major bugs affecting lots of people were ignored forever or closed without comment. It made for a horrible dev experience, and I honestly can't see myself touching it again with an extra-long barge pole.

<comment><USER3> Sorry about that, we definitely had some growing pains given we were a team of < 5 on the OSS side with a user base in the millions. Tried to automate as much as possible on the github side and over-applied our issue robot. I think our process has improved quite a bit recently and hope you give us another shot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nick did a post about this: [https://dev.to/nickparsons/how-to-build-an-ionic- chat-app-wi...](https://dev.to/nickparsons/how-to-build-an-ionic-chat-app- with-react-and-stream-3c1g) I was surprised with how good the performance was. Really, better than unoptimized native apps, which is (at least to me) quite surprising

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be nice if it were possible to not have it load Material Design by default. It's a bad idea in general for people to build their products with Google's visual branding. It basically paves the way for Google to become the entire platform.

<comment><USER8> that depends on your browser / user agent. If you use chrome it's material, if you use safari it's ios.

If you enter responsive design mode in the chrome dev tools and switch to e.g. an ipad config, it will use ios styles.

I really like ionic and capacitor and have built lots of great apps with it. Performance is really ok nowadays (was a problem in the days of ionic 1)

<comment><USER7> That's much worse than I thought. The Web is not a Google or Apple product, and your product's design shouldn't change based on which browser you use. That entirely misses the point of the open WWW. It's a terrible idea to build things in that way.

<comment><USER3> That's ridiculous. We have to make it look like _something_ the user would expect, and something good. Why not pick standard UI designs and patterns in use today? The alternative is that we build our own standards and force users to learn something new.

This is a feature of Ionic you're free to disable but many users like very much. It is more widely used for apps running in the App Store that want to map to iOS and Android UI standards for each platform.

We also pride ourselves on making Ionic easily brandable so the platform standards provide a good base you can easily remix to make it look quite different.

<comment><USER7> The Web is open and independent. Google's and Apple's visual branding are not the standards of the Web. There are countless non-Google, non-Apple designs on the Web and they are not forcing users to learn anything new.

Sorry to disagree, but Material Design itself lacks aesthetic restraint and has accessibility problems with the constant flashing and animation, but that's another conversation.

Edit: I'm talking about the browser, not apps (though I don't like MD there either). I mean that websites shouldn't change their design based on the company that makes the web browser.

<comment><USER9> What if it hadn't been ionic, but was instead the browser itself that rendered the same website differently when in different OS? Oh wait...that's already the case...

<comment><USER7> Google's browsers don't automatically load your websites with Google's visual branding and Apple's browsers don't load your websites with Apple's visual branding.

There's a battle between some of the large tech companies for appification of the Web at the moment, and that way of thinking is a trap.

<comment><USER10> You do realize that Ionic is mainly used for App Store and Google Play right? You're free to not use it. It's a correct decision for Ionic to go with iOS and Android standards, from my point of view, and the implementation is superb as always with Ionic components.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I know. The article says also the Web.

A company shouldn't design its _website_ with Google or Apple's visual branding as if it were locked into a closed platform. It also appears to be a problem with things like Flutter, though I haven't looked closely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks pretty neat! First I've heard of Ionic, and I want to use it. I have a question for anyone familiar with it.

I mostly make Web apps with very complex UIs that target desktop computers specifically. I'm not as concerned with the mobile app story right now, I just want a batteries included UI framework. Is that a valid use-case for Ionic, or should it only be used if cross-platform deployment is needed?

<comment><USER12> I´ve used Ionic for both mobile apps and PWA (web sites that access the device hardware).

It is pretty straightforward to do both in Ionic.

As a side comment, the other day I wanted to do a very simple single page "app" (I jog, so I wanted a "sonar" kind of app that told me how far to my target speed I am, constantly).

I thought I was going to give native Andriod Studio a try... as this was a very simple app and I was going to use GPS functionality, it sounded right. I was badly surprised by the way UIs are built in Android Studio, it is so fugly, it took me back to the AWT/Swing framework I worked with in the late 90s. After battling with the ConstraitLayouts and other bullshit, I went back to Ionic to do a simple HTML layout and had the app working in 1 hour.

I can't believe in 2019 that is the way Google is making people build interfaces in Android.

<comment><USER13> Constraint layout is a delight for working, I wish there was something like that in css.

<comment><USER12> I really want to understand it. It reminded me of my days migrating from the Vb5/6 UI to java swing. It was painful, but after you groked its logic, it made sense.

How can I get to grok Android's Ui layout process?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We've abandoned V3 because of the shift in focus. I wish they would have improved the native build service (I think it's called appflow now?) instead of going for 2 more frameworks and an IDE. Wish them all the luck with their new releases.

What we would have needed: \- Actually usable and maintained plugins. Getting something like push notifications to work is too difficult. And then the plugins won't even build on their build service. It's a lot of hair pulling but should really be low hanging fruit for the ionic team. \- Easier submission into the app stores, because onboarding new people on how to do all the manual steps for every legacy app we maintain updates for is a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER15> To piggyback off this: AppFlow is such a great idea in concept, however their execution is half baked.

I would LOVE to have a build pipeline that builds both iOS and Android and automatically submits them to the app store, ready to go (whether that's TestFlight or an actual prod build)...AppFlow gets you 80% of the way there to much frustration.

I ended up just using Fastlane myself and building my own pipelines that accomplish the exact same thing. Funny too, if you look in the AppFlow build output, they're also using Fastlane. I wish they would have pushed it out _more_ feature complete and include the publish to app stores (I'd be first in line to shell out).

<comment><USER3> Stay tuned! Actively working on that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ionic was a _huge_ velocity-booster at my last startup. They caught some (unfair) flak for being Angular-centric when React got hot. Glad to see them constantly improving things!

P.S. Can the creator.ionic.io get more love? 0:)

<comment><USER3> Glad to hear that! And while creator.ionic.io likely won't get more love, our new Ionic Studio product is quickly catching up to the simplicity of the drag and drop experience in Creator and will quickly be surpassing it, so I hope you check that out! [https://ionicframework.com/studio](https://ionicframework.com/studio)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I haven't used Ionic React, so I can't comment on that, but I've been working on a medium sized Ionic Angular app and I have mixed feelings about it (to the point where if I were to start a new project today I wouldn't use it).

Some random issues that come to mind:

1\. Stacked (push/pop navigation)

This was really bad in Ionic 3 where you didn't actually have a proper router, so this was the only way you could navigate in an app, but it's still an issue in Ionic 4. Basically you can have multiple (stacked) pages in the DOM at the same time which negatively impacts performance (e.g.: more DOM nodes, more computation during change detection cycles, etc). Also, extra cognitive load because you now have to decide for each link whether you want it to push a new page onto the stack, pop it from the stack or replace the root page.

2\. Performance problems and/or memory leaks

Simply navigating in an Ionic app is enough to create memory leaks: [https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic/issues/19242](https://github.com/ionic- team/ionic/issues/19242)

3\. Trying to use canvas (or size sensitive components) inside an Ionic app

\- [https://github.com/ionic- team/ionic/issues/17920](https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic/issues/17920) \- [https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic/issues/17940](https://github.com/ionic- team/ionic/issues/17940)

4\. Slower developement edit/build/reload cycle

I don't have the exact numbers right now but last time I checked, just importing the `IonicModule` into an Angular app module (without using any actual Ionic components) resulted in an order of magnitude slower edit/build/reload cycle (I think plain Angular was something like 100-200 ms; after importing `IonicModule` that jumped to 1-2 seconds; not _that_ bad but significant enough that you could actually feel it).

Given the overwhelmingly positive community feedback I hear about Ionic in general, I think there's a good chance I may be doing something wrong, in which case I'd love if someone could point it out.

That being said, huge thanks to the Ionic team for giving us Capacitor. My experience from migrating the same app from Cordova to Capacitor was really positive. I feel like it brings a breath of fresh air to hybrid app development.

<comment><USER18> Hey, I'm just an Ionic user, but maybe a few comments:

1\. Not sure about that, but the default is that it pushes to the stack. Isn't this what anyone would expect?

2\. Are you sure that Chrome records the number of currently existing nodes or the number of nodes created? I just gave this a try. I have a very simple script that: empties a container div, creates another div, appends it to the container. All of this executed when a button is pressed. The number of DOM nodes should actually stay the same. But Chrome reports an increasing number of nodes. So I'm not sure what the profiler actually does here.

3\. I use Canvas inside an Ionic app. If you render your Canvas at the right point of your component lifecycle, it works just fine.

4\. Haven't observed this.

What I'm doing now: Instead of using Ionic 4 (I have an app made with Ionic 3), I switched to Stencil with @ionic/core. This gives me very fine-grained control over everything. I like it a lot more than the Angular version of Ionic. Maybe you wanna give this a try as well. Less moving parts :)

<comment><USER17> Thanks a lot for taking the time to provide some feedback.

> 1\. Not sure about that, but the default is that it pushes to the stack. > Isn't this what anyone would expect?

If you assume the stacked navigation model is the right model, then yes, I guess pushing pages to the stack is a good default behavior.

However, I'm not completely sold on the stacked navigation concept in general. Let's take GitHub as an example and try to think how the default Ionic behavior of pushing pages on the stack would apply there.

1\. You navigate to the homepage. Stack: [homepage] 2\. You click on a link to open a repository. Stack: [homepage, repository] 3\. You click on the issues tab of that repository. Stack: [homepage, repository, issues] 4\. You open a particular issue. Stack: [homepage, repository, issues, issue#1]

Obviously this is not very scalable as you now already have 4 full-blown pages in your stack that are eating away resources (DOM nodes, more change detection computation, etc). So in order to fix it, you now need to decide which pages should be pushed on the stack and which ones are replacing old ones. And then, as your app grows, you also start hitting some edge cases in the Ionic stacked navigation implementation (e.g.: [https://github.com/ionic- team/ionic/issues/18197](https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic/issues/18197)). And at that point you start questioning whether this whole stacked navigation is actually worth it.

> 2\. Are you sure that Chrome records the number of currently existing nodes > or the number of nodes created?

I've been using the Chrome DOM Nodes counter in the past and in my experience it's been 100% reliable (at least for the use-case that I mentioned in that issue). What I did notice is that the baseline count fluctuates (e.g.: refreshing the same HTML page sometimes gives you a different _baseline_ counter after each refresh; not sure what that's about). But the difference between the initial baseline count and the resulting count always reflects the DOM manipulations performed, so I think it's a good tool for identifying these kind of leaks. However, you might want to spam the "Collect garbage" button (found in the Performance tab) after performing these kind of tests as there's a chance the DOM node was correctly destroyed but it just wasn't collected by the garbage collector (and that's why it's still reported in the DOM Nodes count).

> 3\. I use Canvas inside an Ionic app. If you render your Canvas at the right > point of your component lifecycle, it works just fine.

Completely agree. Once you find the right hook everything seems to work as expected. However, I feel like Ionic doesn't provide enough hooks for this, and the introduction of Stencil in Ionic 4 only made things worse (actually this started affecting us only after migrating to Ionic 4).

To give you an example, let's say you have this DOM structure:

        <ion-content>
            <ion-grid>
                <ion-row>
                    <ion-col>
                        <ion-card>
                            <my-canvas-component />
                        </ion-card>
                    </ion-col>
                </ion-row>
            </ion-grid>
        </ion-content>

In one particular instance we noticed that the <my-canvas-component> had to wait for the `<ion-col>` component to be ready (using the barely documented _componentOnReady_ stencil method) before its size was "stable". Which makes it almost impossible to create a reusable `<my-canvas-component>` that works everywhere, because it can't know in advance in which DOM tree it's going to be placed.

> 4\. Haven't observed this.

The easiest way to test this is to start a plain Angular project and an Ionic project and do a edit/build/reload cycle. Obviously, it depends on hardware and you need to try match the dependencies as closely as possible, but what I noticed is that the plain Angular project is noticeably faster.

> Instead of using Ionic 4 (I have an app made with Ionic 3), I switched to > Stencil with @ionic/core. This gives me very fine-grained control over > everything.

That's interesting, thanks. We may give that a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Currently we're working on an angular/ionic 3 hybrid project with libraries shared though git submodules (Ionic does not support symlinks).

"Libraries" are shared between the Angular app (1 app) and a half dozen or so Ionic apps. Basically the API calls, pipes, directives and other stuff like that.

It works well, even though submodules are a pain.

We'll be upgrading to Ionic 4 at some point, probably keeping the architecture the same. I don't think we'll be moving to React.

</comment><comment><USER20> I feel Ionic is more engaged into open web than big companies trying to enforce their own standards. The question is when Appple and Google will start blocking (outside of walled garden app stores) hybrid apps?

<comment><USER21> Why would they block hybrid apps? Apple only cares if your hybrid app _loads_ its code at runtime. They couldn't care less if it's JavaScript.

Edit: If by "hybrid app" you meant "progressive web app", then yeah, Apple has made it somewhat inconvenient to pin websites to your home screen as apps. But they'd never really be able to block them altogether without blocking the web itself, because there's no hard distinction between the two.

<comment><USER22> I had a Cordova app rejected by the Apple store because it did not use enough native iOS functionality.

<comment><USER21> Were you going out of your way to circumvent native functionality somehow? A calculator app probably "doesn't use much native iOS functionality", but I don't see how that would get it negative points on App Store approval.

<comment><USER22> It is basically a search tool to help people find facilities. It does look a lot like a web site though.

<comment><USER23> That's your issue then. They have rules to stop the App Store being flooded with website wrappers. For it to be in the app store, there needs to be something it offers to make it worthwhile for users. If it's just a website, they can just use a web browser and pin it to the home screen if it's something they use frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd definitely consider using this. Mobile browser support used to be painful for this kind these "hybrid web apps", and animation performance wasn't up to scratch. But engine support is much better since Android 5, and phones have only been getting faster. It's not that hard to produce a performance mobile- web app these days.

</comment><comment><USER25> I espect Ionic React to take a huge share of react native developers on the long term.

React native has far less support of web standards/ features than Ionic, especially modern CSS support. Thus ionic give you more power to build feature rich, UX rich apps.

Secondly react native has very poor debugging experience, meanwhile ionic support devtools (I couldn't get it to work on RN).

Thirdly, contrary to popular belief, I expect ionic to have generally better performance than react native. Chromium evolve quickly and has an army of engineers that bring state of the art optimizations to the web. For example in a few releases, chromium will render elements using Vulkan by default.

Lastly, ionic is more native than react could ever be as it supports all 3000+ cordova plugins and seamless Java interop.

The ability to reuse the codebase for the web and for electron are also huge advantages.

Things will only get better once capacitor stabilize.

Still, I really wish that Ionic now focus on Vue.js/ts support.

<comment><USER3> Wow, thanks, we appreciate the vote of confidence!

It is interesting to think about the possible performance gains to be had running JS in the browser rather than in a detached JS engine. For example, WKWebView on iOS has access to the full JIT-ed JS engine on iOS, while JavaScriptCore does not (as I understand it).

<comment><USER25> The challenge for your marketing is to educate people and to update their beliefs.

It would be nice if you ran public benchmarcks of two equivalent app one in Ionic, one in RN (and eventually more (flutter, etc)) If you are empirically the fastest (maybe we will need to wait a few chromium milestones or to manually enable Vulkan) You could market those numbers by showing you are the first to have Vulkan rendering, HTTP3, CSS contains, dom fragments, etc (I believe Microsoft is working on moving chromium input handling out of the main thread)

And if you showed things you can't do/easily do in react native. For example backdrop-filter has recently been added to chromium and is the future of UX. [https://ferdychristant.com/please-help-make-backdrop- filter-...](https://ferdychristant.com/please-help-make-backdrop-filter-a- reality-f81805ba3d52) But really there's so many features that you offer and others don't! OpenXR, SVG support, css width auto, css grid, etc If you want an exhaustive list: [https://www.chromestatus.com/features](https://www.chromestatus.com/features)

Really if react native was on [https://caniuse.com/](https://caniuse.com/) people would see the truth (the feature gap).

Your marketing also could just make visualizations about the gap in size between the ionic ecosystem (more plugins than RN + all npm packages) vs RN npm packages, that would show the order of magnitude of order of magnitude difference and so how many billions of dollars of man/hours developpers miss by choosing RN.

Unrelated: I hope that you are aware of the cordova maintenance issue [https://github.com/apache/cordova/issues/163#issuecomment-54...](https://github.com/apache/cordova/issues/163#issuecomment-542432768) And capacitor won't be a true successor until it will have full compatibility with prior cordova plugins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How does Capacitor compare to for example Cordova or Flutter or React Native? From their site I gather it's like Cordova 2.0?

<comment><USER27> I believe Capacitor is the absolute life-saver of hybrid development. I've been using Cordova for quite a while and switched to Capacitor last year, and it made my life so much easier. Where Cordova tries to do anything and everything, for all platforms, with its super flaky plugins and buggy config.xml, Capacitor is really focused on doing one thing well: being the shell between your code and native hardware. One of the major points is the code it generates for iOS and Android can be committed to GIT and is yours; you have full control over the native part of your app and could extend it in any way shape or form.

I have an app running in production now for almost a year and am so so glad I've chosen Ionic 4 and Capacitor. Kudos to the team.

<comment><USER3> Glad you're liking it! While we remain big fans of Cordova we do have the fortunate advantage of building Capacitor in 2019 where we have access to much better JS standards, native tooling that is far more mature than before, and a clearer outlook on what devices/platforms need to be supported, not to mention Progressive Web Apps. We've tried to take advantage of those technological leaps and apply them where possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have a responsive React app that I want to convert to an app. I thought you could just drop it in Ionic and it would work automatically but this is using stuff like IonPage, IonContent etc. Do I need to rewrite a lot in order to get it to work and how can I keep a shared codebase in the future? I really don't understand the appeal vs using React Native if I need to rewrite it using Ionic specific components anyway.

<comment><USER3> Yes you would need to use our components because they have meaningful logic when it comes to building an app experience.

Can't make the judgement call on whether it's worth you moving to Ionic vs React Native, but Ionic would be a fit if you prefer a "web-native" approach, using the traditional react dev experience around react-dom, and want to target Electron and the web as a Progressive Web App with the same code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how people who were on the fence for Flutter will think about this.

<comment><USER30> I've had great experiences with Ionic in the past. Capacitor removing the headache that is Cordova looks promising and I'm glad Ionic is moving in that direction. It's a great platform and there's lots of support out there for it. I've chosen Flutter for my latest project however for two main reasons: 1) JS ecosystem fatigue. 2) Not having to write JS or CSS is frankly a breath of fresh air. I can build a UI logically with out the refresh-and-pray experience, even if things get kinda verbose. I should also add that this app is not "brochureware" and needs a more app and less web-like UI. I think Ionic currently excels in the latter.

<comment><USER31> After experiencing a year of 'let's build an Angular app with 60+ developers', Flutter is a breath of Fresh air. I'm an army of one again!

<comment><USER32> I'm just a bit concerned how Flutter is basically going its own way rather than building on web standards. E.g. HTML provides declarative layout while JavScript is ubiquitous and could also be transpiled to native code. Rather, Flutter is building its own declarative UI approach, rendered with its own canvas, building on a significantly less ubiquitous language/ecosystem, and is principally governed by a single organization.

That said, I am seriously considering using Flutter for a future development project, but am on the fence due to the value and familiarity I see in the web platform.

<comment><USER31> I wouldn't use Flutter for web development. It solves targeting iOS and Android without having to use a Javascript Bridge. Neither mobile platform defines its interfaces in terms of HTML. There are definitely a few development teams where React Native is also a valid choice, but cross- platform mobile app development has a learning curve regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Huge congrats to the team! This is a giant milestone in Ionics life. Am a huge fan of the original Angular.js and Angular versions and it's nice to see the flexibility with React.

</comment><comment><USER34> Awesome news. For quite a while we had ionic for Angular, react native for React, quasar for Vue, now glad to see ionic officially supports react from now on.

At the moment though, React-Native has 7x downloads comparing to Ionic: [https://www.npmtrends.com/ionic-vs-quasar-framework-vs- react...](https://www.npmtrends.com/ionic-vs-quasar-framework-vs-react-native)

<comment><USER3> re: downloads, it's not quite that simple. `ionic` is our CLI while `react- native` is the actual library that is installed and will be installed frequently for build systems, etc. Also there are multiple versions of Ionic under multiple package names. Not arguing that React Native has more NPM downloads though but Ionic is quite popular on its own!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Really excited to see this. We have an Ionic Angular app that is running in production and being actively developed.

We probably won't get the chance to use Ionic React soon but really hoping this gets more people excited about Ionic. Being able to deploy to iOS, Android, and web with a single codebase is incredible for starting with a MVP and transforming it into a great product.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I believe that being able to publish a PWA alongside an App Store app is a magic power for products that have a purpose as a web app through link sharing _and_ an app in the stores. Why risk losing users to a download when you can ease them into your world through a PWA first?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What's Ionic's real business model?

They have enterprise support version but my gut feeling is that they make more money on the tooling.

<comment><USER3> It's a combo. While we offer support and advisory services to medium-to-large enterprises, increasingly companies are deploying our native solutions for local app security ([https://ionicframework.com/identity- vault](https://ionicframework.com/identity-vault)) or our Mobile DevOps service that has seen a lot of growth recently ([https://ionicframework.com/appflow](https://ionicframework.com/appflow)). Finally, our new Studio product has been growing very quickly and will be getting a lot more "low code" dev features in 2020 ([https://ionicframework.com/studio](https://ionicframework.com/studio)). Those products are sold on a subscription basis, either yearly w/ multi-year contracts for bigger companies, or on a self-service basis.

If you're curious I did a 2019 business update with more details: [https://ionicframework.com/blog/ionic-2019-business- update/](https://ionicframework.com/blog/ionic-2019-business-update/)

At a high level we are generating real revenue, growing > 100% y/y (and our enterprise business is ~1.5 yrs old), and nearing profitability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> First time hearing about Capacitor. Curious if anyone could share some more concrete differences between Capacitor and Cordova?

<comment><USER38> One of the main differences is that Capacitor projects treat build artifacts as source code, and hence the artifacts are to be version controlled. I thought such aspect was kind of nice for cases in which you need some customization.

Here is an example. In Cordova, when using plugins, a developer would have to use various hooks to produce an artifact with a specific customization. But in Capacitor, they can just make changes in the source code itself. As a result, the build is more predictable. On the other hand, such feature might make it more painful to upgrade stuff if the artifact gets littered with tons of customization. While such problem might be rare due to the infancy of Capacitor, maybe in the future it might come back to bite many projects.

<comment><USER32> I might be misunderstanding how Capacitor code generation works, but would re- running the build process overwrite code customizations on the previous build? If so, how would this be avoided?

<comment><USER38> I see how my comment was confusing. In capacitor, when you initialize a project for a platform (IOS, Android, etc), a bunch of native source code is generated and they are not overwritten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> My ass has been chewed out by Cordova and PhoneGap too much in the past. I hope this is different, I'll take a peek.

</comment><comment><USER40> I love Ionic! Glad to see them reach this milestone. Great product and company and while I am not using them in my current role I wish them the best of luck moving forward. I hope I get a chance to use it again, if not professionally - I'll have to take a look at Ionic React for my next personal project.

<comment><USER3> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is one of those products that I'm sure has a large value-add, but still makes me feel gross that it exists. The amount of glue in here... yeesh.

Edit: I initially read this to be yet another layer on top of React Native, but it appears to be an alternative to it. So less glue than I thought.

<comment><USER3> You can think of it as a "Bootstrap for Mobile/Desktop Apps" if that helps. It's not based on React Native but could be used with it to build out certain screens in the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm a huge fan of Ionic. Capacitor is a great project and fixes a lot of issues I had with Cordova. I have made a few apps that are websites and apps on both stores and they work pretty well I think.

</comment><comment><USER38> Am I right in understanding that `@ionic/react` is a set of UI components that are mobile-friendly?

<comment><USER3> Yes, mobile, desktop, and web (Progressive Web App) friendly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Any demo URL for :

best example of ionic @PWA ? What about iOS ?

Camera, gps, webauthn, you know the cool new api's

I wish to compare :)

</comment><comment><USER43> Big fan of this update!

</comment><comment><USER44> > _Instead of building an abstraction on top of iOS and Android native UI > controls, we wanted to build something that was DOM-native_

Native is dead, on both phone and desktop.

<comment><USER21> I'm a web developer and even I wouldn't agree with this. Especially on mobile.</comment></comment>


Google: We're Actually Really Small - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/saga/2009/06/04/google-were-actually-really-small

<comment><USER2> This is great. They're trying to penalize a company that actually produces value, and propping up the ones that don't.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that what they said about Microsoft in the 90's?

How is this different? Microsoft was seen as playing dirty vs Netscape when they started giving away Internet Explorer for free. And, Microsoft is still in trouble with the EU because of bundling a free media player with its OS. The argument for Microsoft was that they were "adding value".

I'm not really trying to defend Microsoft's actions. I'm just curious to hear why others think that Google is different than Microsoft in this regard? Google gives almost all of its products away for free: Search, Gmail, Docs, Analytics, Calendar, etc... Some call it "adding value" others call it a monopolistic behavior.

I know MSFT got into trouble because of its deals with hardware companies. But how is that different than Google building Android and bundling their apps on my G1?

<comment><USER4> 1) "How is this different?" For one, _it's not Microsoft in the 90s_.

2) Who's taking legal action against Google for "Search, Gmail, Docs, Analytics, Calendar"? I'll give you three guesses.

3) What do _you_ think is the difference between having agreements with most PC manufacturers to pre-install Windows and offering an linux distro for a few models of phones?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, really, Google?

Google may be producing massive value, but for the most part, it's _THE_ online ads network in terms of PPC. They're gunning for the banner ads with their DoubleClick acquisition and they're trialing CPA ads. All these are online, and in February, they exited the radio ads market: [http://google- tmads.blogspot.com/2009/02/google-exits-radio-...](http://google- tmads.blogspot.com/2009/02/google-exits-radio-but-will-explore.html) .

In terms of dollars spent on online ads, Google gets the lion's share. I've seen some reports say 90%, but I'd wager it's closer to 70-80%.

So it looks like a monopoly, walks like a monopoly, and acts like a monopoly. The key question is whether they've abused this monopoly. Being a monopoly in itself is not illegal, but using a dominant market position to stifle competition is very much so. I say let's investigate and make sure there is healthy competition.

<comment><USER6> You fail to address the article's primary point, which is that they're in competition with offline media for ad buyers, and in this broader market, they have <3%.

I think the stuff you wrote is mostly actually _in_ the article.

<comment><USER5> My point is that they're _not_ in competition with offline media. My point is that such an assertion is absurd. As I pointed out, they're quitting offline ads.

Not to mention the trend that more and more dollars are being spent online, not offline.

<comment><USER6> Well, it would be bad news if a medium that had only existed for a few years and had <3% of the marketplace were _declining_ in its market share, wouldn't it?

I don't know why you think the assertion is absurd. It seems like a pretty sensible assertion to me, but I don't know very much about marketing. Do you have time to share some of your marketing experience that makes it so obvious to you that online and offline ads aren't in competition?

It seems like, at a minimum, online and offline _advertisers_ are in competition. If online ads are sufficiently good at getting customers to buy from you, and your competitors are only advertising offline, then you're going to take market share away from them — and have more money to plow into online ads. If particular advertisers can shift part of their advertising spend between online and offline, that represents a more direct kind of competition between online and offline advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Que bono?

Sun and other companies banded together to spur the MS anti-trust investigation. I kinda wonder who's behind this. Yahoo? Microsoft?

</comment><comment><USER7> Well that figures. We can't have a big corporation that actually makes money with out government help. That would just make Obama look stupid.</comment>


See Through Walls with Wi-Fi [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf <comment><USER2> Radar is kind of fun to get into, though 2 Ghz isn't a very good frequency for (through-wall) imaging. [http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-ll-003-build-a- small-radar-...](http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-ll-003-build-a-small-radar- system-capable-of-sensing-range-doppler-and-synthetic-aperture-radar-imaging- january-iap-2011/) has some SAR demos, and if you follow to Dr. Charvat's website you can see he made a 10 Ghz system that images through concrete walls very well.

<comment><USER3> This is incredible! Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of techniques used to detect CRT radiation to rebuild what is being displayed. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking)

<comment><USER5> Anyone remember the program that would let you input an mp3 and it would flash your CRT a certain way that you could pick up the song on an AM radio close by? I believe it was called tempest like the codename.

<comment><USER5> Found it: [http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/](http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Didn't Neal Stephenson write about this in Cryptonomicon? I never thought it was actually possible.</comment>


God Damn It, Google - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/17/god-damn-it-google/

<comment><USER2> nothing meaningful in there, just some guy's whining. waste of time.</comment>


Costa Concordia: Stricken ship set upright in Italy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24121480

<comment><USER2> One of my favorite Wired articles ever was back in '08, "High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas"[1] which is about the Titan Salvage crew saving a massive sinking cargo vessel off the coast of Alaska. Titan Salvage is one of the lead teams on the Costa salvage operation today. It's a really thrilling read, with some great insight into the technical aspects of ship salvage.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_s...](http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all)

<comment><USER3> _> One of my favorite Wired articles ever was back in '08, "High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas"[1]_

I actually came to post about this, and was pleased to see your comment in the top spot. The writers of this article (and many other great reads) have since started their own magazine--called Epic Magazine--and feature this story as one of their primary attractors. Perhaps more relevant to the Hacker News crowd, they use a really neat display format for their amazing (but true) stories: [http://epicmagazine.com/2013/08/deep-sea- cowboys/](http://epicmagazine.com/2013/08/deep-sea-cowboys/)

Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great engineering hack especially the part about building a platform underwater for the ship to roll over and set upon. Impressive!

<comment><USER5> True, a sad story , but i'm impress that they have been able to do that. But the salvage is expected to cost more than a billion , and italian taxpayers will have to pick up the tab... the question is , was it worth ? what about just tearing down the ship and dispose of it ?

<comment><USER6> It contains a lot of toxic stuff -- left over fuel, oil, and especially rotting food. It's also sitting on top of an environmentally sensitive area. So cutting it up in place is not a good option.

In a way, this ship is Italy's Exxon Valdez¹. Irresponsible ship's captain crashes into a reef...

¹ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez)

<comment><USER7> Okay, I'm curious, why is rotting food is toxic?

Edit: Okay, so it's a _cruise_ ship, and I can see that amount of rotting (or otherwise) food possibly causing problems on a reef. I was thinking it was the cargo ship that capsized that was referenced in the wired article linked in another comment, which I had read about before. Still interested in specifics of what rotting food may do to an environment if anyone knows though.

<comment><USER8> I figured it would just bring a whole lot of crabs, lobsters, and fishy bottom-feeders who would make short work of it, get fat, and breed a little more than usual.

<comment><USER6> Aside from possible toxicity to the animals (like how onions are toxic to cats), I think the enormous quantity is a big problem. The crabs, etc. just couldn't eat enough of it, fast enough, to prevent the sea becoming nasty.

I suspect also that the rotting food would consume oxygen in the area, and that would kill some sea life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 60 Minutes did a piece on the salvage effort a while ago. You can find the video here: [http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137223n](http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137223n)

</comment><comment><USER10> 20 min interview with the "captain", recorded a month ago: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bodv2P19Vc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bodv2P19Vc)

<comment><USER11> why "captain" in quotes?

<comment><USER12> Because of his dubious actions in contrary to his rank, I imagine? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For anyone that hasn't seen it, the Google Maps view of the situation is quite impressive: [https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=costa+concordia&data=...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=costa+concordia&data=!1m4!1m3!1d4103!2d10.919649!3d42.3634487!2m1!1e3!4m11!1m10!4m8!1m3!1d26081603!2d-95.677068!3d37.0625!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!17b1&fid=7)

</comment><comment><USER14> why the hell would they do this at night?

<comment><USER15> I think it just took long enough and once started they couldn't just pause it overnight.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any research journals that are free for computer science? - <AUTHOR> A lot of the development that has changed the course of our field has been done open source, or has open source counterparts.
I am interested in exploring the academic world of computer science but I don't know of any journals that exist in the spirit of FOSS.
Are there any that exist? <comment><USER2> While not open journals per se, many (new) papers will typically be available at academic homepages (preprints), via "All [X] versions"-links in a google scholar [0] search, or on arXiv [1], depending on the subfield.

For instance, the machine learning group (Yoshua Bengio, Ian Goodfellow, et al.) at the University of Montreal (the people behind open source software like Theano [2], Pylearn 2 [3], etc.) regularly makes papers available on arXiv, and is currently working on a book about Deep Learning, drafts of which are freely available [4].

[0]: [http://scholar.google.com](http://scholar.google.com) [1]: [http://arxiv.org](http://arxiv.org) [2]: [https://github.com/Theano/Theano](https://github.com/Theano/Theano) [3]: [https://github.com/lisa-lab/pylearn2](https://github.com/lisa-lab/pylearn2) [4: [http://www.deeplearningbook.org](http://www.deeplearningbook.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not familiar with the names of the particular CS journals as that's not my research area, but it's relatively easy to find the type of journals you're looking for. Just search for "open access computer science" and you'll find plenty of journals with free access to articles.</comment>


2012 Salary Guide - Are You Making Enough? - <AUTHOR> http://email.rhi.com/PS!qT3gwgpekHAFBgIAAAAGCgFICggxMDQ5ODAxMQoKMTcyNTY1MDQxNAkAEKDCCgotNTYzNjA5Mzk5BQ==?BRANCH_DIV_EMAIL_ADDR=&COUNTRY_CODE=UNK&FIRST_NAME=&INDIV_ID=7430494&PEOPLE_NO=&TREATMENTCODE=000153683

<comment><AUTHOR> The site has been slow to respond. They are probably getting overwhelmed. Here are the direct AWS PDF Links:

\- Tech: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RHT_SalaryGuid...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RHT_SalaryGuide_2012.pdf)

\- Cretive Group: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/TCG_SalaryGuid...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/TCG_SalaryGuide_2012.pdf)

\- Legal: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RHL_SalaryGuid...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RHL_SalaryGuide_2012.pdf)

\- Financial: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RHI_SalaryGuid...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RHI_SalaryGuide_2012.pdf)

\- Office Team: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/OT_SalaryGuide...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/OT_SalaryGuide_2012.pdf)</comment>


Glenn Greenwald charged with cybercrimes for reports exposing alleged corruption - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/prosecutors-in-brazil-charge-american-journalist-with-cybercrimes-after-lava-jato-revelations/2020/01/21/fd98a5a4-3c6a-11ea-afe2-090eb37b60b1_story.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108262)</comment>


Where are the programmers who give a shit? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/where-are-the-programmers-who-give-a-shit-87f859f13f75 <comment><USER2> > There's a question in the application: "Why do you want to work for us?". > Typical answers are "I want to work in a product team" or "I'm excited about > new UI frameworks". Those answers leave a bit to be desired.

Do they? Working "to save the world" is normally something that I tend to avoid, for many reasons. I'll list a few:

1) Hey, you're __saving the world! __\- normally it means that you can 't complain. Being asked of working weekends or late nights? You're saving the world, how can you be so selfish to say no? Same with responding to mails after work, or moving your holidays because there's an impending deadline. There's more in a job than salary.

2) Normally, these jobs mean a "diverse and inclusive environment", which is code word for "PC hell". No-one can be criticized. You have to evaluate candidates based on their race or gender when hiring and reviewing, which means you're not really free to build a team or fire people (= other factors other than merit are factored in).

3) These companies expect you to share a certain moral stance and political alignment. I personally don't like to be told how should I think by no one, let alone the company I'm employed in. You (respectfully) express a viewpoint on Twitter that's not the company's? Boom, fired. I like to work in a place where you can be anywhere in the political spectrum, assuming that you are respectful and abide the current laws.</comment>


What stable kernel should I use? - <AUTHOR> http://kroah.com/log/blog/2018/08/24/what-stable-kernel-should-i-use/ <comment><USER2> _The best solution for almost all Linux users is to just use the kernel from your favorite Linux distribution. Personally, I prefer the community based Linux distributions that constantly roll along with the latest updated kernel and it is supported by that developer community. Distributions in this category are Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Gentoo, CoreOS, and others._

Note the lack of RedHat, CentOS, Oracle, SLES int al from this list because:

 _Lots of people seem to like the old, "traditional" model of a distribution and use RHEL, SLES, CentOS or the "LTS" Ubuntu release. Those distros pick a specific kernel version and then camp out on it for years, if not decades. They do loads of work backporting the latest bugfixes and sometimes new features to these kernels, all in a Quixote quest to keep the version number from never being changed, despite having many thousands of changes on top of that older kernel version._

For many years I used to roll my own and actually enjoyed going through menuconfig. My first was make config on a Slackware distro (or was it Yggdrasil?) kernel version 1.99-alpha or something from memory but looking at the WP page I had an old distro then judging by the timescale. I think it was a CDROM off the back of a book. make config took about 20-30 mins on a 2.2 kernel (from memory). I've still got a couple of Gentoo systems with kernels that were carefully genkernel'd from around 2.4 or perhaps 2.6 32 bit through to 64 bit systems today. They are classic examples of "Trigger's Broom": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ship_of_Theseus_exampl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ship_of_Theseus_examples#Television_series)

Nowadays apt and pacman and co do the job for me. However, I know I can still always crank out the source into /usr/src/linux (symlink) and roll my own - smashing!

<comment><USER3> > Personally, I prefer the community based Linux distributions that constantly > roll along with the latest updated kernel and it is supported by that > developer community. Distributions in this category are Fedora

Hmm. Fedora only sort of does this. Those kernels in full:

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kernel](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kernel)

Note that the only way to get the latest stable kernel (4.18.x) is to use Rawhide, the development version of Fedora, which is very much not suitable for everyone:

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Rawhide#Audience](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Rawhide#Audience)

If you do the normal user thing of using the latest release version, currently F28, then you get kernel 4.17.x - i think it's currently 4.17.17. That's an EOL stable kernel, and you're not even getting the latest patch version (yet - 4.17.19 went into testing half an hour ago).

Happily, it looks like that minor version is still getting patches (kernel.org shows the last update as being on the 24th of August, the same day as the current stable, and the changelogs are very similar - the current stable has a few more patches).

However, AIUI, the kernel developers could stop patching 4.17.x at any time now, and that means that F28 would not receive any further kernel fixes.

Perhaps this is just a necessary consequence of Fedora's release model. Or perhaps not. Is there a good reason they couldn't change minor versions of the kernel in the updates to an existing release?

<comment><USER4> Fedora regularly rebases to the latest stable kernel, usually by .2 or .3 release; but 4.18 has had quite a busy series of rapid fire updates, so it's already at 4.18.5. I expect to see that in Fedora 27 and 28 updates-testing this week.

Usually it's possible to get a build of current stable or mainline kernel in a day or two on Fedora, through koji. And through updates-testing repo (opt in) a few days later. And through updates (enabled by default) anywhere from 1-5 days later. The system depends on testers using updates-testing repo to give +/\- points to each tested package, and the kernel comes with a higher than usual minimum number of points and time delay to avoid regressions.

You can (manually) install kernels in Koji which don't always show up right away in the updates-testing repo. So you'll see 4.18.5 there for fc29 which can be installed on Fedora 28 (I've been doing this for weeks). And you can also manually install 4.17.19 which is already built there, just not yet in updates-testing. [https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=8](https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=8)

4.17.18 has already gone stable in the updates repo, so anyone doing a 'dnf update' now will get it. [https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/?packages=kernel](https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/?packages=kernel)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting to see Greg's perspective on upstream LTS kernels vs. what he calls "traditional" distributions with their own downstream LTS, like RHEL, Centos, Ubuntu-LTS etc.

Are there any good providers of enterprise-grade support for upstream LTS kernels, the way Red Hat and Canonical support theirs? I could see that as a viable (and perhaps cheaper?) alternative to a RHEL license in some cases.

<comment><USER6> What does enterprise-grade support for a kernel look like?

RedHat and Canonical provide support for a distribution. As part of that support, they maintain a kernel.

If you are actually in a position where you need support for the kernel as a standalone component, you probably would be better off working with the upstream developers anyway (or hiring someone to work on the LTS release to address your specific needs).

<comment><USER7> > What does enterprise-grade support for a kernel look like

Stable mature device drivers for one. You might have petabytes of data connected and want to ensure it is stable as possible. So the vendor makes sure that the right kernel and and right device driver works with exactly your device firmware etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How about a nice BSD kernel? Why fuss with all that Linux mess?

<comment><USER9> BSD kernels almost as a rule tend not to be portable between LIBC(s) and/or userlands. The Linux kernel is more used, faster, more portable.

The BSDs had a major head start on Linux 20-25 years ago but they just sat back became lazy & laughed at Linux, while Linux ate their lunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Say I'm forced to use Ubuntu. But my favourite distro is Fedora, should I use the supported Fedora kernel on Ubuntu.

;)

<comment><USER11> Obviously not, though you don't need to hear the answer nor ask the question.

This comment adds no value. No one would seriously wonder that, nor would anyone endorse it, nor does it need to be discussed because all of that's so obvious.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: More reliable than shared webhosting, more friendly than a VPS? - <AUTHOR>

I have several past projects and clients on shared web hosts. Basically, a single server, running apache configured to run hundreds of virtual domains.
I've been monitoring these sites and there are frequent service hiccups. At least once a day there is a slow/response time (>8secs), no response, high load (>20), etc. This isn't a problem with one provider, it's simply what happens when one of the sites on the same server is hacked or gets high load, or a script gets stuck in a loop, etc.
I use a VPS for my own projects, and it is clearly superior in term of performance. I'm wondering if there are hosting providers that offer virtual servers solely for web hosting? Basically, a simple setup, a bit less expensive and maybe a cPanel-style control panel. Anything out there like this? <comment><USER2> We can offer you a VPS that comes with a controlpanel, we can probably use one of the free panels around. I don't like offering cpanel, since they are quite expensive. send us an email on info (@) wijtec (dot) nl.

We only use VPSs with dedicated hardware assigned to it, so no shared memory, or shared cpu. Other customers can't cause delays on your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is your company? (I tried your domain, and got an empty page.)

<comment><USER2> technically, we are a startup, merging some small companies into one, website is under development

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You may want to look at <http://www.RackspaceCloud.com> Sites

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't this just a VPS?

"Cloud Servers" = 256MB for ~$10/month which is a great price - but it looks like a plain old VPS. I could set it up, but there's no "friendly" way to administer it.

"Managed Servers" are starting at $100/month, which is way too expensive.

<comment><USER4> Cloud Servers are essentially just VPSs.

Cloud Sites (which is $100/month) is a clustered, high availability hosting platform. I haven't personally used it, but based on my great experience with Cloud Servers, I'd expect it to be worth every penny.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure it's a great service, but it's overkill.

Still looking for something as simple as a shared webhosting (mail and webserver work "out of the box", easy control panel) but with better performance.

There's a business idea here for someone.

<comment><USER3> RackspaceCloud.com sites is exactly this. You create sites, they come with uber-simple control panels, stats, email and databases. I really think you should look again at RackspaceCloud.com sites.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Helicopter derives Power from its blades (Could make Drones self-sustainable?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebetterindia.com/35731/iisc-students-win-at-student-design-competition/ <comment><AUTHOR> Almost all Quadcopters have a short flight time. According to DroneLifeStyle.com, it's usually between 10-20 minutes. It is advised to carry an extra battery, or even several. Unfortunately, the recharging times range from 45-90 minutes. Looks like doing tricks and flips or changing altitude drains the battery because of the increase in power used on the motors. [http://dronelifestyle.com/drone-buying- guide/](http://dronelifestyle.com/drone-buying-guide/)

Perhaps this new technology will give a new life to drones (quadcopters) by making them self-sustainable in terms of energy consumption and production.

<comment><USER2> I've googled around but can't find any details about how the power generation works. Perhaps because it is in the process of being patented and they want to keep it quiet for the time being. Where does the energy come from? The only explanation I could find: "harvest energy from blade oscillations present in the rotor blades of the aerial vehicles" makes it seem like they misunderstand thermodynamics.</comment></comment>


Five Tips for Startups to Attract Media/Blog Coverage - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2012/07/19/five-tips-startups-attract-mediablog-coverage/ <comment><USER2> I've found that building a relationship is crucial. I think a company blog can help with that a lot. If you're already publishing things, commenting on others' blogs and getting your name out there, bloggers are going to be much more receptive to you.

If you don't have time for all that though, targeting bloggers whose readers would be interested in your product is great. It's a win-win for both of you.</comment>


Is Palm a Player or Just a Pre-Tender? - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7385/ <comment><USER2> I got my Pre Friday, after a few day of using it the single biggest liability is the overall beta/alpha quality of the software. It's seriously lacking in features, it's buggy, it's slow, battery life is bad, etc. They could have definitely used another 4-6 months of development. I'm not sure it was worth the early release to "beat" the iPhone 3GS to market by a week. The big downside is, as an early adopter, I cannot give it an enthusiastic recommendation to anyone except other early adopters who might be willing to deal with bugs and missing features based on potential over present day usability.</comment>


Bureaucracy in the Planet of the Apes - <AUTHOR> http://www.luisprada.com/Protected/bureaucracy_in_the_planet_of_the_apes.htm <comment><USER2> I like this story, but imagine for a second the water hose replaced with a flamethrower giving the apes severe burns, and it remains always hooked up. Suddenly it becomes a sensible way for the apes to act.

I say this becuase, sometimes, even blindly keeping status-quo is the best course of action.

The real lesson for the apes is that they need to communicate better with each other about what the basis of their processes are.

<comment><USER3> Even cold water was bad enough.

The fun fact is not to say "monkeys are dumb"

It's to compare our ways to mere monkeys, who can't even communicate

<comment><USER2> The point of the story is a metaphor for how burocratic process can establish itself for good reasons, but if followed blindly, the process may continue beyond its usefulness.

The point I was trying to make (poorly) is not that it is fun to torture monkeys, but instead that it can also be dangerous to stop following an established process if you don't know the reason for its existence.

The lesson here is that it is important to record the reasons for establishing a process, as once it is established, people move on. If no-one knows why the process exists, they might be stuck with it lest they get badly burnt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This story originally came to my attention from Yishan's great post on _Engineering Management - Process_ [1]

[1] [http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management- process...](http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management-process.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always referred to this as the Angry Monkey effect. Comes up in development a lot.</comment>


Show HN: Screpy SEO Tool Alternatives 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://alternativeto.net/software/screpy/ <comment><USER2> This product has been promoted constantly over the past two weeks[0]. I keep getting deja vu when checking out the "new" section

[0]: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=screpy.com&sort=byPopularity&type=all)</comment>


Ask YC: Anyone ever heard of Coset? (Ruby Webservice Framework) - <AUTHOR>

I was reading this presentation^ about Rack, and it had a couple slides on something called Coset, which looked like a great way to build RESTful services on top of Rack. The problem is, I can't find Coset anywhere in my Google searches (other than the presentation). Anyone have some pointers/experience with it?<p>^ http://chneukirchen.org/talks/euruko-2007/chneukirchen-euruko2007-introducing-rack.pdf (Slides 30-32) <comment><USER2> <http://chneukirchen.org/repos/coset/></comment>


Ask HN: Would my idea be worth developing? - <AUTHOR> For the longest time I have been wanting to develop an idea of mine which basically consists in a system that works as a "message broker" or "message proxy" that would take a message from a source and redistribute it to any number of other messagig systems (SMS, twitter, etc.) The main implementation that I had in mind was to distribute offers, discounts and publicity to subscribers in any way they chose.
The issue is that I have no idea if this has been done before or if there is a similar system out there, I also don't know if this would be profitable and in case of developing it what would be the best technology to use, I'm thinking of using either Ruby or Python or even node.js as I want it to have a RESTful API for easy integration with other systems.
What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> _that would take a message from a source and redistribute it to any number of other messagig systems (SMS, twitter, etc.)_

This part of your idea is great. But I think by thinking of it as a distribution method for offers/discount/publicity is just meh...

Think of application of this idea in areas such as pinging someone on different channels or someone getting a choice of what media they want to receive alert on about something important (not just another crappy promotional offer).

If you are a system administrator, you most probably know there are much more important alerts/messages people willing to send/receive than a 10% discount coupon or PR shrill.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I thought of PR stuff primarily because that's the need that I have to cover for the project I am working on, but the idea can be implemented in any number of aplications, not just promotional stuff...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you sent a Wuphf (pronounced "woof") to someone, the message went to the recipients' home phone, cell phone, email, fax, pager, Facebook, twitter, and AIM.

The original WUPHF.com beta page is archived at: [https://web.archive.org/web/20101122015439/http://www.wuphf....](https://web.archive.org/web/20101122015439/http://www.wuphf.com/beta.shtml)

And WUPH.com's business plan is archived at: [https://web.archive.org/web/20101122022512/http://www.wuphf....](https://web.archive.org/web/20101122022512/http://www.wuphf.com/investors/includes/wuphf- profit-projections.pdf)

On the one hand, WUPH.com was a satire of Silicon Valley in a comedy sketch on an episode of "The Office" called "The Whistleblower" that aired in May 2010. So HootSuite, IFTTT, &c, &c, are all great examples of life imitating art (anti-mimesis).

On the other hand, the WUPH.com beta site mentioned above _actually worked_ , at least for a while, until NBC shut it down. There are a couple of write-ups about this on Forbes:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/11/19/the- offi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/11/19/the-office- spoofs-silicon-valley/)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/11/19/the- next...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/11/19/the-next-big- thing-in-social-media-wuphf-com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel the need for speed. Time is money in clouds and users like it fast too. Fast makes dev fast to so it is a win all around. You can do a lot of flops in the time it takes to turn base 10 to a float, so I have no time for json or xml in the fast path.

</comment><comment><USER5> If I may ask, what is your speciality and what everyday pains would this fix for you? Others may disagree with me, but I prefer ideas where you are trying to find a solution to a problem that you have on a regular basis.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a Systems Administrator, but have done development before, mostly fixing and patching stuff on the different projects I've worked on. Part of why I thought of doing this is because there is another project that I am working on that needs to implement something similar, but I thought that maybe I could do a service instead of a module in that project. The aim of that project is to deliver publicity (promotions, discount codes, etc.) to customers from different providers of their choice, this will be limited to a certain area, so basically it attacks a local need since we don't have a widespread service like that yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One issue would be that your messages would be constrained to the lowest common denominator. Twitter means messages can only be 140 characters, and SMS precludes attaching images or links.

As for language/platform, I'd recommend python on Appengine. Easy to develop and it'll scale as far as you want. You can always migrate to a purpose built system when you've proved the concept.

</comment><comment><USER7> See IFTTT, Zapier, etc. They are doing what you're doing; maybe you can build on top?

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about using one of such services, but I think they're way too general(ist?) for me, what I want to do is basically have a way to either send a message, login to a panel and submit a message from there or schedule a message that will be distributed among several "subscribers" via different methods, like a newsletter system but using a method selected by the end-user (SMS, email, twitter, etc.)

But you might be right, I could probably do something similar on top of IFTTT, Zapier or Yahoo! Pipelines...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> check out buffer and hootsuite

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I guess what I'm looking for is something more similar to this... Thanks!</comment></comment>


Cryptoeconomics: Paving the Future of Blockchain Technology - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/cryptoeconomics-paving-the-future-of-blockchain-technology-13b04dab971 <comment><USER2> Before modelling cryptoeconomics maybe someone should apply some sound basic economics to the existing blockchain. Having a cryptocurrency where the founder owns 5% of all the currency that will ever exist and deflation is builtin and fixed seems like it fails some fairly basic things we know about standard economics before we need to start modelling the impacts of cryptoeconomics. Just had an interesting discussion about this on reddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6okg5v/a_hacke...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6okg5v/a_hacker_stole_31m_of_etherhow_it_happened_and/dkj8ms4/)

<comment><USER3> no one has actually convinced me this is bad. when you save instead of spend shouldn't your stored potential increase instead of decrease? this makes sense to me and would encourage frugality and a break from the consumerism race to the bottom. If you give someone your food it would make sense to get more food the farther you have to wait instead of less food the longer you wait. Of course the current corporate system does not want this they want you to spend all you have and be a debt slave. Think.

<comment><USER4> Very much agreeing with you in principle that punishing savers is a terrible idea.

That being said, if bitcoin:

* Isn't backed by government (participation is voluntary)

* Is inherently delationary & encourages hoarding

* Loses coins from the system due to accident (eg, people losing passwords)

Then it follows that at some point we expect, say, plumbers to do actual work for someone who's contribution was that they were there buying bitcoin in 2015. It might be troublesome to get the plumbers buy-in to bitcoin specifically vs a new competitor where all participants are pulling their weight in the real world.

Basically, deflation + a long memory makes a monetary system unattractive for people to buy into.

EDIT: I'll point out that _so far_ bitcoin has been an inflationary currency from the point of view of number-of-coins created. That will change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My main question is:

Has anyone found how to solve the double-spend problem WITHOUT global consensus?

The original Ripple idea used trustlines. The nice thing about those is that you don't _have_ the double-spend problem. Each entity issues its own currency, so to spea, making it credit-money rather than value-money. I really love the absence of a global ledger recording every transaction ever made - both from a privacy point of view and this one:

[https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/stories/design-challenge-avoid- ce...](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/stories/design-challenge-avoid- centralization-and-singletons.html)

But the problem with trustlines is that it's hard for anyone to pay anyone, and the bandwidth of trustlines can be pretty small. Plus, you do have to have the permission of all the intermediaries to make a payment.

I would love to have each community issue its own currency without being able to control who pays whom, and without the double spend problem, and without a global ledger of all communities in the world. What are the latest solutioms to this?

</comment><comment><USER6> Cryptoeconomics: 150% more bs than standard economics and powered by Blockchain Theology.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I think a lot of people will initially miss in the critique of money provided by blockchains (read: Bitcoin) is the topology of the network as helpful in modeling cryptoeconomics (read: economics).

Any meaningful definition of a blockchain should prove useful in modeling the systems of money preceded by it. I honestly don't know why people think bitcoins and dollars need separate economics.

<comment><USER8> Agree. All currencies are based on one unifying thing. Trust.

There are currencies with far less trust than Bitcoin yet somehow Bitcoin is seen as some alien idea.

It's not. It's just a non-fiat currency. It will live and die by the trust of the network.

<comment><USER9> it's also digital, which makes it unique among non fiat currencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Terrible article. So many suckers in this mania. 99% of people writing about, trading with, and investing in cryptocurrencies don't know how blockchain or bitcoin even works. It's _worse_ than 1999. The hype and ignorance is astounding.

<comment><USER11> It's worse but it hasn't reached its peak yet. And I'm sure the peak will be even higher than dotcom.... Kind of fun to watch

<comment><USER12> Right! So get in on the ground floor of this _amazing_ opportunity! /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It really stresses me out how folks have equated PoW algorithms in a chain with a general Byzantine Fault solution.

They haven't, and Bitcoin essentially lives and dies by the proposition that it is more valuable to the majority of miners alive than dead. The instant this is not true, there is a potential for a majority of miners to defraud the system and extract value until the value of the currency drops to 0.

And of course, the damage to the system just 2-3 colluding miners could do if they wanted is pretty significant, especially if the goal was DoS instead of theft.</comment>


Proposition HN: I will build your MVP if you pay me $8000 + 50% equity - z-factor

Obviously this is a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694
If anyone from the investing side thinks that offer is a good deal, try the reverse of that:
You'll pay me $5000 to build the MVP of that idea you've been kicking around in your head for the last year. Once I'm done, I'm on to the next project. At this point, you'll take over and spend an additional $3000 to acquire enough users/customers for us to evaluate the project's likelihood of success. We split the resulting company 50-50, as equal co-founders.
I would not take the offer from the original submission, but I'm pretty serious about this one. The thing is, I have 15+ years of experience and given how efficient I am by now, I can make a good living just building people's MVP's, but 50% in every resulting company could make this so much better.
You can email your ideas to email@example.com
Edit: I will also consider offers with bigger initial payments but different equity splits. <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you and hmexx could work together on a YC app.

</comment><comment><USER2> So I pitch the idea to the original offer (5037694) and get buy in. Then give you the 5k. I give you 50% of my 50% and I get 25% of the resulting company for acting as the idea broker. Hmmm ;)

(just attempting to 'hack' this trend)

<comment> z-factor Well, my offer is to get 50%, not 25%. If you want to reduce my share you can increase the upfront payment, so I guess you can spend some money out of your pocket to get a portion of the company. This can get out of hand fast =)

<comment><USER2> I give you 50% of my company which only owns 50% of the parent? ;) (just incase it isn't obvious....i'm not actually planning on taking this up just joking around a little)

<comment> z-factor I got that. Imagine this chain of 50% companies growing to some length. That could lead to a subprime mortgage crisis in a teapot. =)

<comment><USER2> Can you imagine the poor accountant who has to figure out the taxes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This proposition provides far less value than hmexx's.

I understand what you're saying about "execution" being more important than the idea - that is true, but execution also means follow through. Building an MVP and then ditching it to pursue "the next project" is not execution, that's just pure labor, which anyone can find for far cheaper on elance.

<comment> z-factor First of all the same problem exists with hmexx offer -- he can stop putting any work in and will still be the 50% equity cofounder.

Second, if the business is promising and I have a significant equity in it, of course I'll pour more work into it. I'm on the next project only while the other party does their part marketing until we evaluate in a couple months if it's working out.

And I also want to point out that my work is not something you can buy on elance at all, and most definitely not for cheap anywhere.

<comment><USER3> In hmexx's scenario, once the MVP is ready, the developer has received the full amount of cash which is likely the main incentive.

In your proposition, the main incentive is your coding ability.

The key difference is that in the first scenario, the cash is a measurable benefit. In your scenario, your coding ability is uncertain, it could be worth more or less than the cash you are requesting - it's hardly worth gambling 50% equity on ones self-proclaimed ability.

<comment> z-factor I think hmexx did not intend the money to be the major incentive. It seems to me that the major incentive there is seeing your idea finally implemented and having someone handle the part that you don't like or don't know how to do. However, as much as my ability is unknown from just this offer, I don't think it can be argued that it's any less than hmexx's marketing abilities -- he claims to be techie, not some hotshot marketeer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bold idea. But normally it's the people with money who get to dictate the terms and decide what they should do with their money. :)

<comment> z-factor Yes, of course. Still, given all the people who make the claim that the ideas do not matter, only execution does, how many will act on that belief?

<comment><USER5> Maybe you should reduce your terms then. Say $4K for the MVP if you have to spend 1 month on it, $8K for 2 months. I believe you also stand a better chance of getting potential "investors" in if you reduce ownership to 15-25%.

This is a very interesting approach to getting rich. I think I'll try it a few years down the line, after getting more professional experience...

<comment> z-factor Well, the consensus is that the value of an idea is almost certainly zero, so the only way to make it worthwhile is to get one runaway success in a big pool of attempts. Everyone knows the VC version of this approach. This is how it would look like for a programmer. I'm not dead-set on these specific upfront costs and equity split, this is just the reverse of the original offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't this idea fail because the person with the idea could hire someone and give away no equity? How much would an MVP usually cost?

<comment> z-factor There's value in getting it done fast and right the first time and having quality talent invested in the success. The upfront money is more of a way to guarantee that the idea person is invested in the success as well.

You could be right as well and then it's a testament to disproportionate leverage money has in our world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just the sound of 50% equity makes me cringe.

<comment> z-factor Does it make you cringe in both my and hmexx's offers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Brilliant!</comment>


NASA just released a crazy amount of software you can use for free - <AUTHOR> https://news.fastcompany.com/nasa-just-released-a-crazy-amount-of-software-you-can-use-for-free-4031729 <comment><USER2> Direct link to the NASA release:

[https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-releases-software- ca...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-releases-software-catalog- granting-the-public-free-access-to-technologies-for)

Software Catalog itself:

[http://software.nasa.gov](http://software.nasa.gov)</comment>


Listen: The Lesson to Unlearn, Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> https://listle.io/embed/3996601668? <comment><USER2> Also see the main discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619)</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Google tiptoeing around the Olympics? - <AUTHOR>

Today's Google Doodle is clearly Olympic inspired to go with today's opening ceremonies. Yet, when you mouse over the image, the tooltip which would usually explain the doodle lamely says "hooray for sports"
More interesting and worrisome is that when you click on the image, Google has carefully crafted a query that doesn't say the word "Olympics" anywhere - instead opting to search for "opening ceremony london 2012" and let the results explain themselves.
Strangely, on the results page, there's a whole information and schedule box dedicated to the Olympics, presumably build in cooperation with them.
This seems like overreaching to me - I understand that Google shouldn't be able to use the Olympics brand for free, but they can't even link to search results about the Olympics? Doesn't that set a terrible precedent for whether linking can be construed as trademark and/or copyright infringement?
I'd love to hear opinions and thoughts. <comment><USER2> It's nothing to with copyright or trademark, the olympic brand has special protection due to legislation written specifically for it. Unless they're an officially sponsor they can't associate the Olympics with their brand.

That's different from providing information about the olympics.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't "Olympics" a trademark? I think the IOC is pretty litigious.

There's this: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120719/03392819758/olympi...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120719/03392819758/olympics- crack-down-anyone-mentioning-them-without-paying-as-white-house-tells- everyone-to-set-up-olympics-parties.shtml) and this: [http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-12/news/32633390_1_usoc-l...](http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-12/news/32633390_1_usoc- lunch-counter-olympic-sports)

</comment><comment><USER4> You know that google was doing it's best to be in compliance with the strict Olypic IP rules, law and regulations for every country. According to Techdirt, the Olympics in over-protecting their intellectual property -- even to the level of getting host countries to pass special IP laws that only apply to the Olympics...See another techdirt article: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120713/12025919694/olympi...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120713/12025919694/olympic- level-ridiculousness-you-cant-link-to-olympics-website-if-you-say-something- mean-about-them.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER5> My opinion is that you're overthinking this way too much. Just because a single employee probably chose to link it to "opening ceremony london 2012" doesn't mean they're trying to avoid copyright infringement. It probably means nothing

<comment><USER6> Not at all, even in London, businesses that are NOT official sponsors are banned from even hinting that they're related to the Olympics in any way.

There was a of this kind of stuff in the news not too long ago. The IOC is very serious about protecting it's sponsors rights... to the point where even referencing the "summer games" would get you in trouble if you weren't a sponsor. Haha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Opinion? It's Friday afternoon, and I want to go home and have a beer. My neurons are fried.</comment>


Ask HN: How to go about domain hogging? - <AUTHOR>

I know this topic has been discussed to death, but there is so much contradicting information on the internet.
Here is the situation: My dad owns a business since '95 here in Germany and owns a worldwide trademark of its name. The name is a made up word that is very unlikely that somebody else actually uses (nothing else shows up on google). We do own the ".de" domain. But we have more and more international customers so it would be nice to also own the ".com" domain. Unfortunately the registrant of the".com" domain is one of those shady domain protection services. They are based in the US. They registered the domain in 2000 and it will expire at the beginning of 2013. The DNS doesn't resolve the domain. As far as I can see the domain has never really been used.
I was thinking about writing a little script and trying to snatch it back next months, but I am not sure if that is the best option. How expensive would it be to take legal actions (just a rough idea $100 or $10,000) and how likely is it to be successful? <comment><USER2> Did you try contacting the owner of the domain? The "shady domain protection service" will usually forward emails to the owner.

Probably contacting them without disclosing your existing affiliations and without coming across as aggressive you might end up with the domain for a few hundred $ instead of spending month/years feeding lawyers across the globe.

Also: Just because the domain is set to expire at a certain date doesn't mean that it is really going to expire. Self written scripts usually loose out to professional drop services ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_drop_catching> ).

<comment><AUTHOR> I would rather not disclose to the owner that I have any interest in the domain. I feel that then they will definitely extend the domain. I assume only somebody who wants to use the domain or sell it to me would use a professional domain drop service. I doubt anybody will have an interest in using this random name. And as long as nobody knows which name I am interested in, I wonder what the chances are that someone would try to snatch it away to sell it to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Its called a UDRP, costing around 1 or 2 thousand dollars and takes some time to get. Its also dependant on various factors like whether theyre using the domain in bad faith. If you happen to own the trademark of the exact name that their domain uses, excluding the .com of course, you have a very strong chance of winning the domain. Here's the general info on a UDRP [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute- Res...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute- Resolution_Policy)

And here is a domain name attorney which I highly recommend and who can solve all of your domain related inquiries: [http://www.wileyrein.com/professionals.cfm?sp=bio&id=111...](http://www.wileyrein.com/professionals.cfm?sp=bio&id=1113)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, this is very useful information. As far as I can see they have never actually used the domain in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have a trademark on the domain, you can file a complaint with the Domain Resolution Service. They'll look at the trademarks and if they deem you to be the valid owner for the domain, will transfer the domain to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answer. Just to clarify, we do not have a trademark on the domain, but only on the company name i.e. on "our_company_name" and not "our_company_name.com". I assume we need a lawyer to file a proper complaint. Do you have any experience in how much the whole process costs?</comment></comment>